FREEMAN ALEX BALLINGER INTERVIEWS PHYLLIS DALTON: A CAREER IN COSTUME FROM LAWRENCE OF ARABIA TO THE PRINCESS BRIDE
12 FEBRUARY 2025
Phyllis Dalton designed the costumes for four of the most enduring & popular films in cinema history – Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, Oliver! and The Princess Bride. This book is her extraordinary story, filled with insights, recollections and revelations from a life spent on the great film locations of the twentieth century.
In conversation with film historian, Alexander Ballinger, Phyllis Dalton reveals how she created some of the silver screen’s most unforgettable and iconic costumes (think Lawrence’s silken abaya, Lara’s furs or Rugen’s six-fingered leather glove) working with legendary directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and David Lean, a woman in a man’s world.
The book spans Dalton’s extraordinary fifty-year career in the film industry. From sewing in Soho workrooms on Laurence Olivier’s Henry V via intelligence work at Bletchley Park; apprenticeship at Gainsborough Studios to designing costumes on The Man Who Knew Too Much; helping recreate Ravensbrück for Carve Her Name with Pride to risky location work on cold war thriller Our Man in Havana; the epic undertakings of costuming Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago (Oscar, Best Costume Design) and Oliver!, through to cult classics A Private Function and The Princess Bride to her successful late collaboration with a young Kenneth Branagh on Henry V (Oscar, Best Costume Design), Dead Again and Much Ado About Nothing.
Many of the book’s illustrations have been sourced from Phyllis Dalton’s personal archive and showcase unique ephemera, fabric swatches, production stills, large format pencil & watercolour sketches and production notebooks from six decades of film-making. Many of these stunning images, including Dalton’s personal on-location photographs from the Lawrence of Arabia shoot, have never been published before.
Phyllis Dalton A Career in Costume From Lawrence of Arabia to The Princess Bride is a landmark publication on film costume design.
Alexander Ballinger is a film historian and author of New Cinematographers (Laurence King, 2004) and The Rough Guide to Film Noir (Penguin, 2007). He was interviewed (about Phyllis Dalton) by Matthew Bannister on Radio 4’s Last Word on 31.01.25.